Surely the problem with Blair was that he genuinely believed his intentions were honourable? He would have been as dangerous as Thatcher if he'd only had a clear idea of what his intentions actually were...

The electoral system is designed to give less populous parts of the country somewhat more say in elections. This prevents the whole country from having to automatically do whatever New York City wants.

Chris,

I first ask myself whether the reason that I am "grievously disappointed" is because the leader has somehow changed since I elected him, or whether I'm just blindly believing what the biased media tells me to. It's usually the latter.

I am extremely offended and cross at the libelous suggestion that I have changed my mind about Tony Blair. I have never voted for Tony Blair, and I have never voted for any Labour candidate since he has been party leader. I have hated his public school guts ever since as shadow home secretary he nailed himself TO James Bulger's hearse and started making moronic suggestions about banning videos. (Videos were things we had in those days. They were a bit like DVDS.) I attach a link to the first thing I ever wrote about the insane, lying, war-mongoring, bush toadying little murdoch drone.

The British electoral system, in practice if not on paper, is not that different from the US one. When we elect a "Member of Parliament", we are effectively appointing a delegate to cast a vote for Prime Minister on our behalf. Because some parts of the country are more densely populated than others, a single M.P may represent 10,000 or 100,000 votes. As in America, it is perfectly possible for one party to have a majority of MPs without having a majority of the popular vote. I believe that this was the case with Major's second government.

The electoral system is designed to give less populous parts of the country somewhat more say in elections.

This is nice provided that you think that rural people are entitled to a larger say in government than urban people. I'm not quite sure why this should be desirable. No doubt they have the right to be protected from the tyranny of the majority, but then so do a lot of other minorities.

You could design systems that give unique special privileges to particular minority religions, or ethnic groups, or old age pensioners, or redheads, or homosexuals, or inner city tower-block dwellers, or science fiction fans. One way you could do so quite easily is by making their votes count for more in a democracy. But nobody seems likely to argue that this is a good idea. The inhabitants of thinly-populated geographical areas, on the other hand, often have privileges sanctified by time, which makes them sacred.

(The funny thing is, British political history includes an example of geographical privileges that were left unadjusted until the results were hilariously funny but nothing to do with democracy. As that eventually had to be fixed, a century and a half or so ago, we do have a system which, despite all its numerous flaws, at least allows for constituency boundary adjustments as a routine matter. Despite which, we still get quite a lot of government by parties with minority support - and, the Tory tabloids would say with a little justice, we've ended up privileging Scots voters to so extent. Hey ho.)

Mr. dodsworth:Was not referring to the general state of being both Christian, & Socialist (both of which I happen to be, in spite of High Church affiliation), but the Nonconformist/Low Church tradition that Blair has tried to exploit; a tradition, by the way, passed on to the US branch of Methodism Bush JR. claims as his moral base. (Yes, there have been complaints).

Not that one does not welcome any reminder that Catholicism does not have to be what is currently considered "right".Even if its Jesuittical;)

All the comments about the failings of our electoral systems are true. That is why we Christians in America are busily trying to establish a theocracy. I, myself, am to be named secretary of chocolate production and motorcycle testing in the new regime.

Contrary to popular urban legend, the Senate and electoral college, were designed to give rural areas more say in elections (just look at Road Island and Delaware, both have disproportional representation though they have very little rural area) but was rather part of the original system of checks and balances of republican government, under the old Republic, before the dark times, before the Empire.